Board of Governors approves 23-team playoff format in 2025

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Cooper Godin
July 11, 2024 (2:45 PM)

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The American Hockey League's Board of Governors has reportedly approved the return of a 23-team playoff format in 2025.

According to Tony Androckitis of InsideAHLhockey.com, the American Hockey League has made the decision to stick with their 23-team playoff format for the 2024-25 season and will review any changes next summer when their Collective Bargaining Agreement comes to an end.

"I hope you like the American Hockey League's expanded 23-team playoff format..

The AHL's Board of Governors has approved the format for one more year, sources tell InsideAHLHockey.com, meaning that the 2025 Calder Cup Playoffs will remain unchanged from the previous format from the previous three playoffs.

The decision to extend the playoff format for only one year came to fruition as a way to revisit the topic next summer when the current AHL CBA expires." Androckitis said.

In 2022, the American Hockey League decided that they were going to expand their playoff format to include 23 teams, an increase of seven from the 16 they had in the previous full year with playoffs - 2019. According to Androckitis, the move to 23 was to allow teams to earn extra revenue coming out of the COVID-19 lockdowns.

"This will be the fourth postseason the AHL has used this expanded playoff field, as it began with the 2022 Calder Cup Playoffs as a way for teams - coming out of the COVID shutdowns - to generate some extra revenue." Androckitis said.

The new format allowed the American Hockey League to create an additional playoff round dubbed 'First Round' which is a best-of-three featuring six teams in the Eastern Conference and eight in the Western Conference. The structure of the current playoff format is also a bit strange.

In the Pacific Division, the first-place team in the regular season gets a bye to the 'Division Semifinals' round, while second through seventh place teams battle for the other three spots in round two. In the North and Central Divisions, the top-three teams get a bye to the second round, with the fourth and fifth place teams facing off in the first round. As for the Atlantic Division, the top-two teams get a bye to round two, while teams ranked third through sixth play in the best-of-three first round.

It'll be interesting to see what the American Hockey League decides to do when their CBA expires next summer, but it's safe to say that 23 teams is way too many for a playoff format and going back to 16, like they had from 1996 to 2019, would be a smart decision.